Stats

Monday, June 26, 2006

Breaking news!: Details sketchy. KCTV5 said that Tucson, AZ reporting body of recently killed soldier is missing from the mortuary. Casket discovered empty and seals broken in a field.

No links yet to story. Stay tuned for updates or hoax breaker.

Updates:

Authorities now know where the body is after an empty casket was found in the desert on the southwest side over the weekend.

A nationwide alert was issued to try to find out whose body was in the casket, which had military- type markings.

Now investigators say the body had been disinterred in May, at the request of the family. The family had it cremated. Sheriff's Deputies say the empty casket was taken to Los Reales landfill, where someone stole it.

My guess is they looked up the serial numbers on the casket and back tracked.

TUCSON, Ariz. -- An empty casket with a military seal was discovered in a desert area south of Tucson, and sheriff's deputies were looking for the body.

"Obviously it had the smell, and there was other evidence that it had been inhabited recently," Deputy Dawn Barkman said Sunday.

Forensic investigators took DNA samples, and a nationwide alert was issued in hopes of finding out who was the recently-used casket, Barkman said.

Deputies were called to a desert area near Interstate 10 around 5:30 p.m. Saturday after two people playing paintball found the casket, Barkman said. The casket was metallic silver with a U.S. Army insignia on it, she said

Casket was sealed?

"A military-type casket, with stars and stripes and a U.S. Seal on it," said Lt. Bob Kimmins, the Pima County Sheriff's Office forensics commander.

What was once someone's final resting place, deputies found vacant.

"Without being terribly graphic, the contents of the casket itself suggested to law enforcement officers that clearly a body had been in there," Kimmins said.

Discovering the identity of the body was the just the beginning for investigators. "We do not have a whole lot of information obviously. The mystery to us is where is the body, and there's too many possibilities to me to speculate what could have happened here," Kimmins said.

Even nearby residents can't begin to answer that question.

"It seems to me to fairly quiet [here]. We don't get bothered by neighbors or people coming up to doors too much," Martello said.

The casket was sealed and in its original condition when deputies found it. It is unknown whether it was dug up or how long the body had been inside.

There is a nationwide broadcast to anyone missing a casket containing a body. If you have any information, please call 911 or 88-CRIME.